All guys remember the first time they saw their wife, but Daniel Posada's first glimpse of his bride-to-be was out of a sportsman's dream.

Posada, 46, was hunting for mule deer in the Kitchen Creek area of East San Diego County eight years ago when he noticed a beautiful young woman walking up the road. She was toting a gun and wearing a pink hat.

“I couldn't believe a woman would be out in the middle of the backcountry like that and hunting by herself,” Posada said. “Turned out she was walking up and down the road, trying to kill a deer.”

Posada politely told her the way she was hunting would not be very productive and offered to share some hunting techniques with her if she wanted to come back the next day.

“I told her to come by my camper at 5 a.m., but she woke me up at 4 a.m.,” Posada said. “She really wanted to go hunting, and we hit it off right away.”

Tami Pham said meeting Posada changed her life in many ways.

“We started off as friends and realized we were very compatible,” Tami said. “I learned so much from him. He's a great hunter, the best I've ever seen and I grew up around hunting in the country in Vietnam. That's where I learned to appreciate hunting. I love it because of the sense of adventure it brings. When we met, I was really trying to get a deer because I love the taste of venison.”

They hunted and soon became great friends. Three years after meeting her, Posada took Tami back to the exact spot where he met her and proposed marriage. Tami accepted. Today, they travel and hunt together whenever they can. They've taken bears in Canada, elk in New Mexico and wild turkeys and mule deer in San Diego County.

Daniel is a general contractor and has his own company, Dan-Co Systems, Inc. Tami is a molecular biologist who works in a diagnostic laboratory.

Tami said she's learned patience and determination from Daniel, two important ingredients for hunters. Those qualities and others helped each of them harvest a buck already this season during the San Diego County archery season. Rifle season opens today for antlered and antlerless deer.

Tami's buck, taken with a 55-pound Mathews compound bow, was a husky forked horn; Daniel's, arrowed with a 70-pound Mathews compound bow, was a trophy deer, a 4x5 that scored 124 5/8ths by the Pope and Young scoring method for bow hunters.

“Bob Dawson of the Safari Club scored it, and Bob has been hunting the county his whole life,” Posada said. “Bob said it was the biggest buck by rifle or bow that he's seen shot in the Julian area where we hunt.”

Whenever Posada talks about hunting, he can't do so without remembering his father, Raul Posada, and his father's brother, his uncle Jesus.

“They were in World War II together in Germany and came back to San Diego in 1950,” Posada said. “They started hunting Sheep Mountain and the Kitchen Creek area in the 1950s. They had a group of 20 to 30 in their hunting party every year. My father didn't take us to ballgames or anything like that. He took us fishing or hunting and taught us how to enjoy life there and survive in the woods. When we went to the beach, we went to Mexico and camped on the beach.”